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Irreducible on Game and Player

Irreducible

Heather Richtmyre  //  August 17, 2010


Is there no other way to describe a roleplaying character?

A

ttributes. While I encounter variety among other game terms, such as the usage of favor, reputation, and standings to refer to how much one is liked by an in-game faction, character attributes are described by a rather narrow band of concepts.

My character in EVE is encompassed by a quantity of skill points and her intelligence, perception, charisma, willpower, and memory scores. World of Warcraft uses strength, agility, stamina, intellect, and spirit, with most of the divergence occurring because a capsuleer from EVE has no need for physical attributes while hooked into a small metal pod to fly a ship.

And, of course my Dungeons & Dragons Online character uses strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma. While all the terms are not exactly equivalent, dexterity can easily be viewed as fitting the same concept as agility, with constitution fulfilling the same role as stamina.

Why exactly are concepts from tabletop games so ubiquitous in MMOs?Many of these terms are involved in Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks that predate me, and some of the others can be found in the old World of Darkness books in my collection. Of course, this does not answer why the concepts from these tabletop games are so ubiquitous within the arena of massively multiplayer roleplaying games.

One explanation for this is that these terms provide a solid description of different physical and mental aspects of a character, though defining them precisely can be rather complex, especially with the various mental ones. Charisma is the most difficult when other people are involved, as the effects of it are likely to only extend to non-player characters. Mandating the reactions of other players in such a fashion seems rather unlikely. Also, any attribute based on the idea that possessing it will cause the character to act in a more sensible manner cannot be allowed to take control from the player, however appealing such may seem on occasion. If only a character could prevent such actions as forgetting to enter stealth before approaching a large group of enemies.

The variety of attributes doesn't even begin to cover other gameplay factors such as resistances, armor penetration, and to-hit, but does seem more of a core mechanic than the others — at least so far as it can be viably implemented in a setting with large quantities of players.




Alexander Williams // August 17, 2010 // 9:04 PM

You know, not even the bulk of tabletop RPGs use those stats anymore. So, I suppose if the only RPG you can imagine is D&D, sure, its a fair argument ...

The reason MMO designers are so hung up on that architecture is most of them got out of tabletop gaming 10 - 20 years ago, and it shows in their designs. But don't blame us for their retro-obsession.


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